Tag Archives: House of Representatives v. Burwell

A recap of where we are in House v. Burwell

The hottest issue in the law of Affordable Care Act at the moment is whether the Obama administration had constitutional authority to pay insurers billions of dollars for the “Cost Sharing Reduction” provisions when Congress did not appropriate any money for that program. Those who believe the Obama administration has acted illegally got a boost recently from United States District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, who ruled that the House of Representatives had standing to sue Obama administration officials for these sorts of payments.

But it was not just that Judge Collyer ruled in favor of standing that creates the tempest; it was what she said in her opinion. As I noted in a recent blog entry, in resolving the standing issue, Judge Collyer appeared to reject the Obama administration’s main defense. Instead, she wrote:

An appropriation must be expressly stated; it cannot be inferred or implied. 31 U.S.C. § 1301(d). It is well understood that the “a direction to pay without a designation of the source of funds is not an appropriation.”

And that would seem to be precisely what we have here. It is very clear that there is no clear direction from Congress to pay insurers for the cost sharing reductions. Indeed, as Judge Collyer notes:

On July 13, 2013, the Senate Appropriations Committee adopted S. 1284, a bill appropriating monies to HHS and other agencies. An accompanying report stated that “[t]he Committee recommendation does not include a mandatory appropriation, requested by the administration, for reduced cost sharing assistance . . . as provided for in sections 1402 and 1412 of the ACA.

To be sure, Committee reports are not the same thing as the law. Nonetheless, to the extent they are relevant, here they are highly unsupportive of the notion that Congress intended to spend money on this program.

Moreover, Judge Collyer rejected the argument that the Obama administration could spend money on cost sharing reductions because, unlike in other areas of the ACA, Congress had not explicitly forbad it. Wrote Judge Collyer, “The absence of a restriction, however, is not an appropriation. ”

Looking at a fallback argument

And, so, what’s left? And here is where we get to an argument that is just too perfect ” It was articulated recently by Professor Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan on his Incidental Economist blog and has been attributed as well by a big proponent of the ACA to Professor David Super of Georgetown University. I’m going to quote it here, leaving Professor Bagley’s hyperlinks intact so that you can get a sense of at least some of the authorities on which he relies. (Obviously, his blog post (like mine) is not a brief or a law review article, and I am by no means contending that his links were insufficient).

Even without an appropriation, health plans still have a statutory entitlement to cost-sharing payments. What that means in non-legalese is that Congress has promised to pay them money—whether or not there’s an appropriation. And health plans can sue the government in the Court of Federal Claims to make good on that promise. (Congress has undeniably appropriated the money to pay court judgments.)

Now, before we go further, note that this may not exactly be a legal argument. That is, Professor Bagley could well be right that the lawsuit is kind of pointless if the insurers get paid in the end, but the House could still be right that the Obama administration acted unconstitutionally by paying insurers without compelling them to go through those extra hoops. But this ignores, of course, the expressive value of the lawsuit which is that the Obama administration is acting lawlessly in implementing the ACA. (It is consistent, though, with some people’s view that, whatever its merit and whatever the importance of the principles at stake, the lawsuit is, in today’s political environment, misguided because cutting off cost sharing reductions is going to anger a lot of people and Republican fingerprints are all over the lawsuit).

Whether Professor Bagley is making a legal or pragmatic argument, (or both), however, I think it is just a little too perfect. It assumes its own conclusion. If it were true that a beneficiary of a federal program — here, poor little insurance companies — could recover in the Court of Federal Claims when Congress failed to appropriate any money for their welfare program, then there would be far less point, really, in Congress ever making appropriations. It would change the Constitution to say something like, “The Executive may draw money from the Treasury except where prohibited by Congress.” The presumption would have changed from giving Congress the power of the purse, which is what I thought the Constitution meant, to giving those powers to the President, which I thought was kind of more like a monarchy.

Moreover, there is a decent reason that we separate passage of a bill from funding of its programs. And it is well illustrated by the ACA. Consider the cost sharing reductions. They were enacted in March, 2010 when the ACA passed. But they were not to take effect until January 1, 2014. It could well be that, between passage and effect, budgetary priorities shift. Perhaps we need more money for relocating refugees than we did at the time the original legislation was enacted, or perhaps we became more concerned about an ever growing multi-trillion dollar national debt. But Congress thought, if we ever do have the money, this cost sharing reduction program is a pretty good idea. And so, the solution is to say, as we have, and as Judge Collyer did, that passage of a bill, generally speaking, is different than appropriation of funds. Congress can enact laws and then not fund the “promises made therein” at least for some period of time. I do not think Congress had to formally repeal cost sharing reductions in order to put the program on hold and then reenact the program when money became available.

Now, I can imagine Professor Bagley at this point rejoining, “but Congress did appropriate the money by creating a permanent appropriation for judgments rendered in the Court of Federal Claims. ” But if that were true, Congress would have to, each time it did not wish to appropriate funds for a program it has enacted, create an exception to the permanent appropriation for judgments rendered in the Court of Claims. In addition to converting one provision of the US Code into a trash compactor for discarded legislative ideas, such a requirement would seem to violate the whole idea, at least of Judge Collyer, that “the absence of a restriction … is not an appropriation. ”

Does Slattery v. U.S. mean that Bagley is actually right? (No)

I will confess that my own above arguments were more thoroughly persuasive to me until I looked at Slattery v. U.S., 635 F.3d 1298 (Fed. Cir. 2011), which involves the Tucker Act. There, the Federal Circuit abrogated a prior doctrine announced in Kyer v. U. S., 369 F.2d 714 (Ct. Cl. 1966), under which, if there was an agency of the United States, such as army post exchanges (PX) that operated without use of appropriated funds but on the basis of other revenues, there was a jurisdictional bar against the Court of Federal Claims hearing the case and thus no ability of the plaintiff to recover absent a seldom-obtained explicit consent to suit from the otherwise sovereignly immune United States.

Slattery itself involved a claim by the shareholders of a bank against the FDIC which, apparently, did not receive federal funding but which is a federal instrumentality. Supposedly, in the course of coaxing the bank to have another failing bank merged into it, the FDIC had created contractual assurances that the method of accounting and capitalization standards for the assuming bank would be, for lack of a better term, fairly mellow. Later, in apparent violation of the contract, the FDIC imposed stricter standards and the bank ran into problems as a result. The court held that the fact that the FDIC did not receive an appropriation did not prevent the Court of Federal Claims from hearing the case.

We conclude that the source of a government agency’s funds, including funds to pay judgments incurred by agency actions, does not control whether there is jurisdiction of a claim within the subject matter assigned to the court by the Tucker Act. The jurisdictional criterion is not how the government entity is funded or its obligations met, but whether the government entity was acting on behalf of the government. … Thus we confirm that Tucker Act jurisdiction does not depend on and is not limited by whether the government entity receives or draws upon appropriated funds.

So, one might be tempted to run with this language and say that, indeed, the insurance companies can sue in the Federal Court of Claims for the money the government “should” have paid them under the cost sharing reductions (except of course that the Obama administration has paid them.) The fact that no money was appropriated doesn’t matter. But, I don’t think this is quite right. For one thing, Slattery is about jurisdiction, not about the merits. All it is really saying is that the fact that the federal entity was not funded by Congressional appropriations does not, in and of itself, create an automatic bar to the court hearing the case. It does not say that, if the federal agency was acting way outside its authority that the federal government must pay the claim out of the permanent appropriation. Moreover, in the Slattery case itself, the basic idea was that the FDIC had not honored the deal under which it persuaded one bank to take on a problem bank, not that the FDIC had no authority whatsoever to assist with bank mergers.

Moreover, if you look at the language of Slattery very carefully, the issue is “whether the government entity was acting on behalf of the government.” Here, I say, it sure looks like the Treasury was not acting lawfully in paying insurers for cost sharing reductions out of money that was supposed to go for tax refunds. And so, it may well be that the Treasury was not acting on behalf of the government but on behalf of the extra-legal objectives, however meritorious or well intentioned they may have been, of the President. Thus, although as a lawyer for HHS I would certainly be citing Slattery a lot, it does not address the issue in the current case.

And one more thing

Could we also think for a bit about how strong the insurers’ claims in the Court of Federal Claims would really be? My heart bleeds for insurance companies perhaps more than most, but I have trouble working up a great deal of sympathy here. Insurers surely became aware at some point before the beginning of 2014 that Congress had not appropriated any money for the cost sharing reduction program. They would certainly be aware of a problem if the court rules in this case that payments to them are illegal! And, yet, knowing this, they would seek to sue for making contracts with limited cost sharing available to policyholders at discount prices? Its not quite the same thing as suing to enforce a contract where you knew the money to pay you had been embezzled, but it is not that far off either.

Many have been concerned that the architecture of health insurance without medical underwriting created by the Affordable Care Act was inherently unstable and that, sooner or later, the markets it created would contract due to serious adverse selection problems. Although various creative bolsters from the Obama administration have delayed that forecast from yet materializing, except perhaps for the most generous of ACA exchange plans, as it turns out, the more immediate threat to Obamacare may come not from its inherent architectural deficiencies but from technical flaws now being unearthed by program detractors.

One of these flaws has been much in the news: the failure of the premium tax credits section of the ACA (section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code) to extend to policies sold in states that did not establish an exchange pursuant to section 1311 of the Act. There are approximately 34 such states. In 2014, they covered about two-thirds of those enrolled in individual health plans through the Exchanges. The Supreme Court is likely to decide this term in King v. Burwell whether the Obama administration’s determination to extend tax credits to persons in those 34 states is lawful. A decision against the Obama administration, which appears to be the prevailing prognostication, will throw major parts of the ACA into turmoil because only the sicker insureds with incomes that now qualify them for policies are likely to purchase those policies at full freight. Insurers, knowing of that proclivity, are going to be very leery of selling such policies; adverse selection would seem inevitable. It remains to be seen whether legislative action at the federal level — revision of section 1311 of the ACA — or at the state level — grudging creation of exchanges — would return those markets to equilibrium following a decision expected by many in King v. Burwell.

Another flaw, however, has not received much attention — until late. It is the apparent failure of Congress directly to appropriate money for another critical part of Obamacare that keeps premiums low: the cost sharing subsidies created by section 1412 of the law and now codified at 42 U.S.C. § 18071. The idea of this provision is that poorer purchasers can purchase a policy for “Silver” prices that ordinarily would have 30% cost sharing, but receive a policy that provides anywhere from “Silver plus” (27%) to “Platinum-plus” (6%) levels of cost sharing. This way, lower-middle-class people can get a policy that they might be able to afford without much of its purpose being undone by hefty deductibles and copays.

Cost Sharing Reductions

For the reasons I outline below, it appears clear that Congress at least strongly contemplated that provision of these extra benefits to the poor would come not from higher prices for policies paid by wealthier purchasers on the individual exchange. Instead, the federal treasury would pay the insurers for the extra costs they incurred in offering these more generous variants of the policy. It appears that the Obama administration has been making such payments to insurers, even if the amount of the payments — potentially in the billions — has not been made clear. (see 3:29:36 of this CSPAN video and the comments of CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner).

In the lawsuit captioned United States House of Representatives v. Burwell, however, filed November 21, 2014, the plaintiff demonstrates with some care how Congress never actually appropriated any money for the cost sharing subsidies that sweeten Obamacare coverage. Presumably, insurers should thus have to cover themselves the resulting extra expenses created by higher utilization and lower deductibles and copay. Presumably insurers should do so out of revenues they receive from customers paying the full price. Gross premiums for everyone would thus need to be higher: probably 10-15% higher to cover the shortfall. And if insurers neglected to take those extra expenses into account, well, tough on the insurers one supposes. Such a lack of empathy would not be without recent precedent. Congress just hurt the insurers badly in section 227 of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015 (“Cromnibus”) by apparently cutting off a creative funding arrangement the Obama administration had undertaken to make payments to/bailout the insurance industry through the Risk Corridors subsidy program.

The complaint

Incomplete funding of Risk Corridors is middling potatos, however, compared to non-funding of cost sharing. I would not be surprised to see an increase of 10-15% in gross premiums result if such cost sharing payments were found unlawful. An increase of (1) 10-15% resulting from the absence of appropriations for cost sharing subsidies, (2) perhaps 3% from whatever premium increases are likely to result from the “Cromnibus” decision not to permit circuitous funding of Risk Corridors deficits and (3) perhaps another 7% from increases in premiums that will result from the ACA-required phaseout of the Transitional Reinsurance provision under which the federal treasury covers insurers for insureds with large losses all adds up to a gloomy future for the Affordable Care Act. And that’s true even if, as its proponents claim, the cost curve is being bent. One reason insurance premiums are as low as they in the Exchanges is that, behind the scenes, the government is heavily subsidizing them in a variety of ways.

This cumulative projected increase can not be dismissed by asserting that the increase in premiums resulting from court-barred federal subsidies would affect only those earning more than 400% of the Federal Poverty Level and thus ineligible for Obamacare subsidies. Yes, it might appear that the net premium for others under section 36B really relates only to their incomes and not to the gross premium for insurance.

But the appearance of a limited effect is misleading in at least two respects. Increases in premiums resulting from court decisions and statutory reductions will matter more broadly. First, the subsidy only covers the cost of the second lowest silver plan in the rating area. The many people wanting a plan more expensive than that — a Silver PPO in many parts of the country or even a Gold or Platinum HMO — will be affected. Indeed, their net premiums will go up by a higher percentage than the increase in the gross premiums because the denominator of the increase calculation will not be the old gross premium but the (smaller) old net premium. Second , to the extent that insurers attempt to compensate for the premium revenue shortfall by raising premiums on employer-sponsored insurance, under Revenue Procedure 2014–37 (page 363), which purports to implement section 36B, such a move would trigger increases in percentages of income that individuals have to pay as the net premium for even the second lowest cost Silver Plan.

So, what’s the answer? We haven’t seen the literal answer in court to the complaint by the House of Representatives and, of course, there’s a very serious issue as to whether this is the kind of dispute that belongs in a court anyway. Bet the house that the Obama administration will raise issues called “standing” and “political question doctrine” in an effort to get the case dismissed. But, if those objections fail, is there an answer to the core of the House of Representative’s complaint on this point?

Congress intended that the federal treasury fund cost sharing

One answer might be that Congress at the time of the ACA’s passage clearly intended that payments for cost sharing reduction come out of the federal treasury and not through insurers charging higher prices. The evidence on this point seems rather compelling. Here is at least some of it.

In discussing premium tax credits and cost sharing reductions, Section 1412(a)(3) of the ACA says that the “The Secretary [of HHS], in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, shall establish a program under which— the Secretary of the Treasury makes advance payments of such credit or reductions to the issuers of the qualified health plans in order to reduce the premiums payable by individuals eligible for such credit. “

Section 1412(c), captioned “(c) PAYMENT OF PREMIUM TAX CREDITS AND COST-SHARING REDUCTIONS” states in subparagraph (3) “COST-SHARING REDUCTIONS.—The Secretary shall also notify the Secretary of the Treasury and the Exchange under paragraph (1) if an advance payment of the cost-sharing reductions under section 1402 is to be made to the issuer of any qualified health plan with respect to any individual enrolled
in the plan. The Secretary of the Treasury shall make such advance payment at such time and in such amount as the Secretary specifies in the notice. “

Section 1313(a)(6) of the ACA , captioned “APPLICATION OF THE FALSE CLAIMS ACT” states: “Payments made by, through, or in connection with an Exchange are subject to the False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. 3729 et seq.) if those payments include any Federal Funds. Compliance with the requirements of this Act concerning eligibility for a health insurance issuer to participate in the Exchange shall be a material condition of an issuer’s entitlement to receive payments, including payments of premium tax credits and
cost-sharing reductions, through the Exchange. ” This provision makes little sense if cost sharing reductions were not paid for by the federal government.

Section 1332 of the ACA addresses the possibility of states getting a waiver from many of the provisions of Title I of the ACA and says that in such event “the Secretary shall provide for an alternative means by which the aggregate amount of such credits or reductions that would have been paid on behalf of participants in the Exchanges established under this title had the State not received such waiver, shall be paid to the State for purposes of implementing the State plan under the waiver. ” Why would the State receive such funds for cost sharing reduction if the ACA did not contemplate that the federal government would already be paying for them?

Section 6055 of the ACA requires issuers of “minimum essential coverage” to provide information on the amount of any cost sharing reductions received. This provision makes no sense if insurers were just supposed to absorb the reductions and pass them on to other customers.

Section 10104(c) of the ACA addresses limits on use of federal funds to pay for abortions. It says no qualified health plan may pay for abortion services with “[a]ny cost-sharing reduction under section 1402 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (and the amount (if any) of the advance payment of the reduction under section 1412 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).” This prohibition would hardly seem necessary if cost sharing reductions were supposed to be absorbed internally by the insurer.

But perhaps it takes more than intent in a bill

My assumption, however, is that plaintiff House of Representatives will concede that the ACA certainly authorizes payments for cost sharing reductions and may indeed have contemplated that they would be made, but that it takes more than authorization for the executive branch. The House will argue, however, that to actually to make the payments: the Executive branch needs money. And it needs the money to be in the right account via a formal appropriation by Congress. The House will likely cite “The Purpose Statute,” 31. U.S.C. §1301 in support of this assertion. This statute reads: “Appropriations shall be applied only to the objects for which the appropriations were made except as otherwise provided by law. ” It will likely also cite 31 U.S.C. §1341(a)(1), the Antideficiency Act in support. It says “An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not make or authorize an obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure of obligation.”

These statutory citations are indeed foreshadowed by several paragraphs on the House complaint during which it recites the requests of HHS for appropriations to pay for Cost Sharing Reductions ($4 billion) and asserts that no such appropriation was ever made. The plaintiff notes that, by contrast, Congress did appropriate funds for the first cousin of Cost Sharing Reductions, advance premium tax credits through a standing appropriation under 31 U.S.C. § 1324 for tax refunds due individuals.

Or maybe not

I would expect two rejoinders to this argument. The first is a technical and statutory one: apparently the Secretary has at one time asserted that appropriations for premium tax credits also covers cost sharing reductions. The second is that any law restricting the executive’s power to spend money in this fashion is itself unconstitutional.

A statutory rejoinder?

Although acceptance of this first statutory argument would avoid the turmoil sure to erupt if cost sharing subsidies are judicially prohibited and the difficulties of constitutional adjudication, it strikes me, at least initially, as a loser. Although premium tax credits have a similar objective to cost sharing reductions, the two programs are not identical. They could operate independently. There are many who are entitled to premium tax credits who are not entitled to cost sharing reductions. If similarity of objective means that funds between programs are transferrable, an awful lot of Congress’ “Power of the Purse” has been evaded.

It’s also possible, however, since we haven’t seen the defendant’s response to the complaint that there’s some more authorization somewhere for the spending. If so, the House of Representatives is going to have egg on its face. I assume, however, that the House wouldn’t have been so foolish to file this lawsuit if it had not its homework carefully and failed to find even a needle-in-a-haystack explicit authorization for the spending.

A constitutional rejoinder

The harder question — and the one that would make House of Representatives v. Burwell a case about far more than the ACA — is the constitutional one. Under what circumstances does the President have authority to spend unappropriated funds? Much ink has been spilled by scholars on this issue over the decades . Tahere are some older Supreme Court cases (Hooe and Sutton and Bradley) that indirectly suggest that the limits created by the predecessors to these statutes are real and permissible. There’s also a thorough review of the then-existing literature by the Clinton-era Department of Justice in a memo of its Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 (2001 WL 36175929). Perhaps more relevant will be two cases which, though not binding on the Supreme Court, will likely have some precedential force.

West Point: Excellent views, historic buildings

Consider first Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery Central School District v. United States, 48 F.3d 1166 (Fed. Cir. 1995), a case decided by the Federal Circuit in 1995. It involved a statute, the “Impact Aid Act” designed to help certain categories of schools: (1) “section 237” school districts whose property tax base was reduced by the presence of a lot of non-taxable federal property in the area, (2) school districts that had to educate children of workers on federal property, and (3) school districts that had incurred a substantial increase in the number of attending children. Highland Falls, which sits near the West Point Military Academy, was an example of the first kind of district. It should have received money pursuant to the Impact Aid Act since West Point apparently ate up apparently 50% — and a beautiful 50% at that — of the property in the district . But Congress, instead of allocating a lump sum for all payments to be made under the Impact Aid Act, split up the money with specific appropriation for each of the three categories of hardship it identified. And, apparently, the amount of money allocated to the category against which Highland Falls was claiming was short whereas the amount of money Congress had allocated to two other categories was more complete. So, Highland Falls wanted the Department of Education (DOE) to transfer money from the more fully funded accounts to the one that would benefit it.

The court in Highland Falls refused to direct such a reallocation of appropriated funds. Here’s what it said when DOE declined to do so:

Section 1341(a)(1)(A) makes it clear that an agency may not spend more money for a program than has been appropriated for that program, while § 1532 provides that an agency may use money appropriated for one program to fund another program only when authorized to do so by law. It is undisputed that, in each of the relevant fiscal years, Congress appropriated specific amounts to pay for § 237 entitlements. It also is undisputed that, in each of the relevant fiscal years, in order to fund § 237 entitlements at 100% levels, it would have been necessary for DOE to use money appropriated by Congress for entitlements under other sections of the Act—squarely in contravention of § 1532. The approach DOE followed was consistent with this statutory landscape.

…

As noted above, in order for DOE to fund § 237 entitlements at 100% in accordance with § 240(c), the agency would have had to transfer money from other sections’ appropriations to fund § 237. If DOE had followed such an approach, it would have been spending more money than Congress had appropriated for § 237 entitlements, in violation of § 1341(a)(1)(A). In addition, it would have been depriving at least one other section’s program of funds expressly appropriated for it by Congress. Put another way, it would have been “raiding” one appropriation account, for example § 238 or § 239, to credit another, § 237, in violation of § 1532.

Now, this is not a square holding on precisely the issue in the House of Representatives current lawsuit. It’s not a case where — as here — the Executive branch undertook a reallocation and someone wanted to challenge it. Nonetheless, the language of Highland Falls is supportive of the House’s point. Having decided, apparently, not to allocate funds for Cost Sharing, the executive branch can’t raid a related fund to help pay for it.

Also relevant will be Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians v. United States, 16 Cl. Ct. 75 (1988). There an Indian tribe sought money to equalize funding of its schools relative to local schools. There was a federal statute that was supposed to provide such money. But Congress had declined to appropriate funds for this special “set aside.” The tribe asked that money be used from other accounts controlled by the Secretary of the Interior to make the statutory payments. The court upheld the government’s decision not to do so.

The Set–Aside Fund was not funded in fiscal year 1986, the year of plaintiffs’ request. Plaintiffs argue that the Department of Interior could have applied funds from other accounts. However, the Anti–Deficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. § 1341(a) states that a United States officer may not authorize expenditures “exceeding the amount available in an appropriation or fund for expenditure or obligation.” Thus, the officers of the Department of the Interior could not grant the plaintiffs’ request for funding. Penalties for violating the Anti–Deficiency Act are codified at 31 U.S.C. §§ 1349 and 1350. The court thus finds that the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted as funds are not available to satisfy plaintiffs’ claim.

Again, not a case 100% on point, but still one that, at least in dicta, reinforced the House’s claim here that the executive can not dip into one pot of money, even if related and even if efficient, to pay bills for another program. And that is true even if Congress has earlier expressed its intent that such a program be funded.

MRE Beef Stew

And there is, on the other hand a case involving a disappointed bidder and military purchases of diced turkey (with gravy) and beef stew: Southern Packaging and Storage Company, Inc. v. United States (D.S.C. 1984). There, a district court found that, although the purchase from a Canadian company violated the “Buy-American” provision of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act there was no violation of the anti-deficiency statute because the amount spent on combat rations — even Canadian-sourced ones — did not exceed the overall Congressional appropriation.

There is, in addition, lots of non-judicial authority on the subject, ranging from death-match law review articles by Professors Sidak (1989 Duke L.J. 1162 (1989)) and Stith, (97 Yale L.J. (1988)), to summaries of the law from the United States General Accountability Office to a memorandum from the Clinton-era Justice Department.

Conclusion

So, there is a lot more to be said on this subject and we have not yet had the benefit of Secretary Burwell’s research and argument. But, at least for now, provided the House can overcome the substantial justiciability questions, it looks like it may have a strong case on the merits. Of course, the House ought, like all of us, to be careful what it wishes for. One wonders what reaction many Americans will have to a House legal victory when they find that they can no longer afford the health insurance they purchased due to what they may well regard as a “technicality.”